


The Doctrines of Natural Law

by MilkshakeB



Category: Coldfire Trilogy - C. S. Friedman
Genre: Fix-It, Gen, Post-Canon, Yuletide, Yuletide 2006
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-24
Updated: 2006-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-25 02:23:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1626527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MilkshakeB/pseuds/MilkshakeB
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chance encounters, thwarted waitresses, blatant impossibilities, and onion soup. A fairly average day, for what Damien Kilcannon Vryce's life has become.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Doctrines of Natural Law

**Author's Note:**

> With thanks to Azarias, Catalase, Cristin Anne, lilacsigil, and Writingrose for betaing, talking me through the rough patches, and hitting me over the head when necessary.
> 
> Written for Melina

 

 

Damien had just gotten comfortable when the man who was not Gerald Tarrant appeared at the entrance to the inn's dining area. Just by accident, just by coincidence--for the fifth time. Still slender and delicate enough to appear less tall than he was, still with those same immaculate silk shirts and leather pants, still with dark eyes that swept the room before settling on Damien and narrowing. The expression was familiar, even if nothing else truly was.

Annoyed, Damien thought. Or at least exasperated. He sighed and put down his soup spoon, wondering if it would be more politic for him to leave now, or wait until after he'd completed his meal. Of that leaving there was no question; if he didn't go, the other would, and Damien found he was oddly just as happy for it to be himself.

But something had clearly changed, because this time, instead of sweeping from the room--or staring Damien down until Damien left, unsweepingly--the other man seemed to consider for a moment, then sighed and crossed over to Damien's table, seating himself in the other chair without the slightest hesitation or pause for permission.

Not that it had been likely that Damien wouldn't grant that permission. But in a way it was reassuring to know some things hadn't changed, possibly never would.

"This," the man who was not Gerald Tarrant told him, "stretches the bounds of coincidence."

Damien paused, settling his hands around a mug of tea for reassurance more than anything, and then quietly responded, "I'm not doing it on purpose."

"I didn't say you were," the other man replied, his tone so familiar Damien had to swallow around a lump in his throat. "After all, in two of these... incidents, I picked your inn, and not the other way around. And as much as I've analyzed those choices for anything that made them different than countless other times, there's--"

"--nothing," Damien finished, for him, having already gone over this before in his own head, after around the third time. "Nothing unusual at all."

"Just so." The man--Gerald, Damien found himself thinking helplessly, even knowing the danger of it--leaned back in his seat. "Which of course invites any number of questions. Why? How? Perhaps even, Who?"

"The fae can't be Worked anymore," Damien pointed out, after a beat.

"The fae can't be Worked _by normal means_ anymore," the other man corrected. "Humanity finds a way, Vryce. Consider my own existence as living proof." After a moment, when Damien gave a cautious nod, he went on. "Still, such a Working would leave... signs. Which are still visible to one who knows how to look for them, and retains the ability to do so."

Which was, Damien realized, as good as answering one of the questions he'd mulled over, these past weeks. Gerald Tarrant could still See. He swallowed again, and then offered, "The Iezu?"

"Consider me untouchable. By their Mother's decree."

"That would seem to rule out a 'Who'," Damien said, wondering briefly about the potential risk of that previous statement--but then, who said the Mother of the Iezu had linked that decree to 'Gerald Tarrant' in specific? "Unless you want to consider the possibility of divine intervention."

"Unlikely," Gerald said, and Damien fought an instinctive urge to protest. It _was_ unlikely, when all was said and done, and besides, if it were true, he wasn't sure it would really matter if they determined that were the case or not. It wasn't as if they'd be able to do anything about _that_ kind of influence.

"Which leaves 'Why?'" Damien began, and then paused as his waitress reappeared, a menu in hand. She'd done something to her clothing so that it was simultaneously tighter and with a deeper neckline. Damien found himself meeting Gerald's eyes with a smile, the shared memory almost visible in the air between them.

It brought a catch to his throat, a pang of something so intense and complicated that it took a moment to come close to deciphering it, and even then it was hard to put words to. Not grief, exactly. Call it longing, call it missing the comfort that came of traveling with someone who had shared the same experiences you had, caught the references, understood the jokes. Damien had done just as well without that for the better part of his life... but he'd never been through events quite like the ones he'd survived the past few years. It wasn't until this strange experience of losing him and having him not-quite-back that Damien had come to realize how much having a companion, even as troublesome a companion as Gerald Tarrant had so often been, meant to him now.

"Will you be dining with the other gentleman?" the waitress asked, leaning forward so Gerald would have a better view of her assets. The world ticked on as it always did, oblivious to personal revelations or appropriateness of the moment.

Gerald, for his part, hesitated, and Damien fought down an urge to beg him to stay, suspecting nothing would break this fragile and tentative truce and send him back to the road as quickly as that. "The soup is good," he offered instead, "and we haven't finished our conversation."

Gerald's lips quirked in a brief smile, and Damien fought a wash of disorientation; the expression so familiar, and yet so new and strange. "True," he said, and nodded towards the waitress in a distant manner, clearly ignoring the charms she was so eager to display. Damien considered warning him that it was just as likely to make her more determined, but he had to admit that on some level, he was enjoying the spectacle. From both ends.

Besides, when she leaned down like that to put the menu on the table, he got a fair view down her blouse as well.

She left after Gerald finally convinced her just water and soup would be enough for now, thank you, and they spent a strangely comfortable moment in silence before Damien felt impelled to bring up the thread of conversation again.

"It could be more basic than that, you know," he pointed out, softly. At Gerald's raised eyebrows--another point of familiar/unfamiliar--he went on. "The fae still respond to... previously established patterns," he finally dared, unsure exactly how specific he could go without putting Gerald's dearly-bought life at risk. "It's possible there's enough still there, despite everything, to... have an effect."

"Despite everything indeed," Gerald said, mouth twisting wryly. "I'd hardly expect something like that to last through the end of more than one lifetime, let alone two. That it managed the first was astounding enough."

"Which argues all the more in favor of it, in a way."

"Perhaps," Gerald said, leaning back. "That still puts it more into the realms of coincidence than I'm comfortable with."

Damien regarded him for a minute, and then smiled. "And puts it more out of your control than you're comfortable with?"

Gerald's eyes narrowed. "That, too."

Damien opened his mouth, but was interrupted before he could reply by the return of the waitress. Just as well, he thought, watching her flirt with a subtlety one usually attached to bricks and hammers. He wasn't sure his instinctive rejoinder to that remark would have been altogether safe.

Which was why Gerald had a point about needing to be able to control this. To stop this. Five times, now, they'd found themselves staying at the same inn, twice more stopped for a meal at the same place along the way. At first, at Black Ridge Pass, it had been understandable--and so Damien had left, unwilling to risk Gerald's life no matter how much it meant to Damien not just to know Gerald lived, but to _see_ he lived. But after four more such encounters, and the attendant changes in direction and plan after each one.... Perhaps Gerald was right. Perhaps it was too much to be attributed just to the lingering affect of the bond between them, and whatever influence that might still have on the fae.

But Gerald clearly worried it was intended to be a malign influence, and Damien found himself... not quite so sure.

And he'd missed the other man. That was undeniable, however dangerous the territory it might get them into.

Which was what impelled him, after the waitress finally left, to ask, "What if we didn't try to fight it, whatever the cause? If something or someone seems determined to throw us together again, what if we just... went with it? Traveled together for a time, and saw what happened?"

It shouldn't have been possible for someone to suddenly look that menacing, that coldly dangerous, over a spoonful of onion soup.

"I have no wish to die again, Vryce," Tarrant said, lowering the spoon. Not angrily, but with a cold precision that was almost worse. "Not simply for the sake of testing whatever this is. If it's a trap, it will have to go unsprung. And if it's simply your loneliness...." His eyes narrowed. "I never thought you found me all that pleasant a traveling companion to begin with."

"I didn't--" Damien began, stumbling over the words, then forced himself to stop. "You," he said, checking himself and straightening to deliver the words with as much dignity as he could manage, " _are_ still an asshole. Apparently some things even multiple rebirths can't cure."

Gerald opened his mouth, eyes still narrowed, to make God knew what reply... and then stopped as abruptly as Damien had, focus abruptly turning inward. For a moment, he didn't even seem to breathe, and Damien felt a touch of panic as he rewound what they'd just said and realized how that could be interpreted as a violation of the sacrifice Gerald had offered, could shatter the bargain he'd made that was all that allowed him to continue existing.

And then, with widening eyes that fixed on Damien with something almost fevered in their depths, Gerald was back from whatever internal journey he'd just taken. Alive. Damien let out a shaky breath he didn't even realize he'd been holding, and opened his mouth to apologize.

"Dinner will have to wait," Gerald interrupted him, pushing his chair back from the table. "I need to talk to you. Alone."

Under the circumstances, there was no possible way Damien could have disagreed.

* * *

Five minutes and one flustered waitress later, he found himself standing in Gerald Tarrant's room and watching the former Hunter... pace. There was no other word for it, and nothing quite adequate to express Damien's mixture of emotions in reaction: surprise, fear, and even bemusement were somewhere in there.

"Do you know," Gerald finally said, pulling up to a halt in front of the chair Damien had manage to claim by dint of entering the room first, "what just happened?"

"I almost killed you?" Damien suggested, after a moment, still squirming slightly inside.

"That's what I would have _thought_ just happened if I were you, I suppose," Gerald murmured, and Damien rolled his eyes and resisted the urge to comment. It was likely Gerald wasn't even aware of how condescending he sounded, just then. "What really just happened is... more complex." He paused, eyes fixing on Damien in a way Damien had come to recognize as being more about his adept's Vision than his normal eyesight, and then took a deep breath before saying, "Do you remember what I told you, about how I managed to avoid death in the Forest?"

Damien opened his mouth to reply with an instinctive affirmative, and then caught himself, staring, as the full implications of what he'd just been asked--of how the question had been _phrased_ \--sank in.

"Yes," Gerald said, softly, catching the expression on his face. "And no change in the fae at all. No change in _me_ at all. And yet that's not the most telling thing."

Tarrant turned and paced again for a moment before going to a window and looking out. He spoke without facing Damien, voice methodical. "I just spoke of who I _was_ , Vryce. And yet I told you," he continued, inexorably destroying the last remnants of Damien's ability to think of him as anything other than Gerald Tarrant, whatever form he wore now, "that I would be _unable_ to even speak of what I'd done. It was not a bargaining such as what I made before, Vryce, with a narrow thread to walk to keep myself on the path designated. It was a _sacrifice_ \--an offering made and accepted. And as with all sacrifices, what is offered cannot be gotten back, by the nature of sacrifice itself. I _could not_ claim any of those past things, was physically unable to speak the words that would link me to them. Another might perhaps have unset that delicate balance, but I never could--within the context of myself, that act and Working was flawless, perfect, self-contained and absolutely balanced." Gerald paused, took a deep breath, turning back to Damien at last. "Or so I thought."

It was too much to process all at once, but Damien struggled to nonetheless. "You're saying...."

"I'm saying," Gerald replied, very quietly, "that for whatever reason, by whatever power, for somehow the terms of my sacrifice don't appear to apply to you. Which ought to be impossible. It's as if one person in all the world found themselves able to go back and visit Lady Faraday's Fae Shoppe, or one person could still touch and wield that sword I cast into Shaitain, or.... Or one person could still walk the corridors of the ship Casca destroyed to seal us to this planet. And yet, if even one person _could_ do that, the Workings those sacrifices enabled would never have been possible, because they wouldn't be sacrifices at all." Gerald stared at Damien, as if expecting to find the answers written on his forehead, and his stare was intense enough that Damien found himself wanting to check and make sure they weren't. "This isn't _possible_ , Vryce. It's simply outside the physical laws of Erna."

After a pause, Damien said the only thing that really seemed to be possible. "That we know of."

Gerald took a deep breath, and Damien watched him with concern. He'd seem him survive sunlight, torture, demons, betrayals, impossible quests, and the tainting of his faith with more composure than this. But then, all of those things had fallen within the defining laws of their world as Gerald had understood them, Damien supposed. As frightening as that thought was, all those things had been, to a certain degree, _consistent_ with the fundamental things Gerald believed to be true.

And this wasn't.

"If I brought up divine intervention again," Damien began, slowly, smiling. For a moment, Gerald seemed speechless, and then he scooped up a pillow from the bed and tossed it at Damien.

"Ow," Damien said. Not because it had hurt, but because it seemed appropriate, in as much as anything would seem appropriate after being hit with a pillow wielded by the former Hunter.

"That is _not_ an acceptable answer," Gerald snapped.

"Well, it may have to do until we can figure out another one. Which may be shortly after never, if the degree of impossibility is what you say it is."

An irritated expression crossed Gerald's face. "Nothing is impossible to figure out, given the time and resources."

"For which," Damien pointed out, feeling a sharp grin cross his features, "you'd need to travel with me, for at least a time."

Gerald's eyes narrowed and his fists clenched for a moment, and then he relaxed, spreading his palms in a gesture Damien recognized as defeat. "Getting the physical laws of our world to rewrite themselves just for you to win an argument is cheating, Vryce."

"Whatever it takes," Damien replied, feeling strangely lighter than he had in a very long time. Feeling almost cheerful. Because, he realized, he wasn't going to have to abandon Gerald. Not again. Maybe not ever again. "Besides, you've done it to me often enough."

Gerald paused, and then gave him a jerky nod, acknowledging the point. Damien couldn't resist going on. "Sometimes," he told the former Hunter, the former Prophet, "you just have to take things on faith."

There were many possible responses to that, but it was somehow comforting that all Gerald chose to do was glare.

"So." Damien leaned back in the chair, feeling more cheerful than he had for weeks, if not months. "What exciting and life-threatening new location are we going to now?"

For a moment, Gerald didn't respond, and then abruptly his anger broke, a smile brightening his face like sunlight after a storm. "As risky as these roadside inns can be, Vryce," he murmured mildly, "I don't think the kitchen here is _that_ bad."

It was a relief, after everything, to discover he could still laugh.

* * *

 **Note:** You know how some kids, on Christmas, ask for something like a Barbie Dream Stable set, and on Christmas morning they race down and find this wee little package, and they open it and it's a photo of a pony or a riding crop or something? And they try to be polite about it if they're nice kids ("It's a lovely riding crop, really, and I'll learn so much about BDSM with it.") which just makes their parents amused, because they finally explain, "This isn't your gift. This is the teaser to your gift. Because we couldn't fit a full-grown horse in the house, and anyway it's still being paid for on installment plans."

This year for Christmas I got you a pony. But as Gerald could probably have told me, making a full-grown real equine takes a while. So when the small novel I found myself writing is finished and prettied up, I will deliver it with bows in its mane to your door. In the meantime, enjoy the riding crop.

 


End file.
